


noise; or, another chapter in the adventures of the sweetest, purest gremlins.

by zenstrike



Series: like the light of anything that grows [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BOYS PLEASE, Gen, POV Adam (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 20:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18709606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Keith plans a sleepover.





	noise; or, another chapter in the adventures of the sweetest, purest gremlins.

**Author's Note:**

> the subtitle comes from Mr_Flamingo who commented on the main fic and made my whole dang day okay

“Are you sure you can handle the boys?” Regina asks, frowning while Lance and Keith yell at each other in her living room.

“Mom,” Rachel says, scowling from the entrance of the kitchen. “They’re loud.”

“Oh yeah,” Adam replies. “We’ll have loads of fun.”

There’s a thunk and a crash. Rachel dashes away.

“Loads of fun,” Regina echoes. “With all three of them.”

Adam waves a hand. “Hunk’s a great mediating force.”

“He tries to be,” Regina mumbles.

Rachel runs back. “They’re fighting!”

Keith lets loose a shriek.

Lance yells: “Give me the controller you turd!”

And Keith yells back: “Make me!”

And there’s a noise like Lance is doing his best to do so.

Rachel spreads her arms. “Do something,” she says at her mother.

Regina looks at her, looks back at Adam.

“It’ll be loads of fun,” Adam says.

And this time, Lance shrieks.

 

* * *

 

“We’ll die,” Takashi says later, sitting on their bed and frowning at the ceiling instead of at Adam. “We will actually, truly, honestly die.”

“They’re not kids anymore,” Adam scoffs. “We can handle them.”

“Do you remember Halloween?” Takashi lowers his chin and Adam looks away before he can feel the full force of his frown.

“I remember.”

“With the going down of the sun!”

“Do not teach Keith that kind of—irreverent nonsense.”

“You want to see irreverent nonsense,” Takashi says. “Let’s bring all three of the boys over and give them ice cream.”

“They’re eleven!”

“ _ Keith _ is eleven,” Takashi scolds. “Lance and Hunk are  _ ten _ .”

Adam frowns at him.

Takashi scowls back.

“We can handle three boys.”

“Sure,” Takashi sighs and flops back on the bed with a groan. “Us and what army?”

 

* * *

 

“Do we have any scary movies?” Keith asks one sunny morning four days later, digging through the closet where Takashi hides all the DVDs.

“I don’t know,” Adam says, clutching his coffee and frowning at Keith.

Keith digs a little further into the closet and slides with a “oomph” to his chest, clutching  _ The Breakfast Club _ and  _ Beauty and the Beast _ .

Adam comes to stand behind him. He slurps his coffee and watches Keith scramble upright again.

“We need scary movies,” Keith insists, waving the DVDs at Adam before tossing them back in the bin.

“Do we?”

“For the sleepover.”

“Mm. No.”

Keith twists to scowl up at Adam, who shrugs.

“I’ll find a way,” Keith promises.

“You are not torturing Hunk.”

“It’s not torture! It’s fun!”

“I said no.”

Keith ignores him and dives back into the box. Adam sighs and goes back to the kitchen and finishes his coffee.

* * *

 

They’ve had all three over before, and overnight. Last Halloween Takashi had taken them trick or treating and Lance and Keith had wrestled over the last peanut butter cup until Hunk ate it and then someone had tried to climb a wall.

“Never again,” Takashi had said and Regina had laughed at them.

And then, months later, Keith had come up to Adam in the kitchen and said: “Can I have my friends over?”

And Adam, forgetting the Halloween debacle, had said: “Sure.”

“Adam,” Takashi says, digging his chin into Adam’s shoulder a little after midnight the Thursday before the sleepover. “What do we feed them?”

Adam tugs the blankets over his head and tries to curl into a ball. “It’s just a sleepover!”

“Pizza, then.”

“We know how to look after a trio of children, Takashi!”

“Do we,” Takashi sighs and slinks down against the bed. Adam pokes his head free of the blankets and tries his best to glare at Takashi. “We barely know how to look after Keith.”

“We’re doing great with Keith.”

“Keith’s doing great despite us.”

“Oh my god,” Adam groans. “Can we have an anxiety attack in the morning?”

“I guess.”

 

* * *

 

Keith is on his third bagel the next morning when Takashi asks: “What do you want to do at the sleepover, Keith?”

“Watch scary movies,” Keith replies and licks sesame seeds from his lips. “But Adam says no.”

“Adam’s right.”

“It’s okay,” Keith says nonchalantly. “We’ll think of something.”

Adam grows suspicious.

* * *

 

At six o’clock that night, Hunk arrives with a backpack stuffed full of blankets and his toothbrush clutched in one hand.

“Hi Hunk,” Adam says.

“Hi,” Hunk says. He slips out of his shoes and nudges them neatly to the side. “Thank you very much for having me.”

“Anytime.”

“Hi Hunk,” Takashi says, coming out of the living room. “We’re going to order pizza. Are you hungry?”

And then Keith barrels into the hall and grabs Hunk’s sleeves and drags him away. There’s a thwump from the living room. Keith reappears to run into the kitchen and steal one of the dining table chairs.

“Do you want help?” Takashi asks as they watch Keith drag the chair into the living room.

“No!”

“A chair!” Hunk cheers.

Takashi looks at Adam. Adam shrugs.

Lance arrives a little later, bearing a box of microwave popcorn and an enormous plush shark.

“Hi,” Lance says when Adam answers the door. He grins toothily.

“Hi Lance,” Adam says. “Nice shark.”

“Thanks!” Lance shakes the box of popcorn. “I brought snacks!”

“I see that.”

“Lance!” Keith yells into the hall.

“Lance!” Hunk agrees, a little less loud.

Adam steps out of the way and watches Lance kick off his shoes and run into the living room. He sighs when Keith shrieks: “What is  _ that _ ?”

“It’s a shark! Do you like it?”

Keith says something Adam doesn’t catch but it’s probably something along the lines of “I guess.”

* * *

 

Lance empties his backpack on the living room floor and a pile of library books cascades out.

“No!” Hunk says.

“Yes!” Keith cheers, and he and Lance pounce on the pile while Hunk goes back to arranging their blanket fort. 

“I thought Adam said no scary movies,” Hunk grumbles.

“I did say that,” Adam pipes up from the couch, tapping his knee.

“These aren’t movies,” Keith says triumphantly.

“I’m really good at ghost stories,” Lance says. “Too bad we can’t start a fire.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Takashi says quietly and comes to sit next to Adam. He squirms back against the couch and, once he’s settled, Adam shuffles closer so they’re tucked comfortably against each other.

Adam looks away from the shoddy-despite-Hunk’s-best-efforts blanket fort and away from Keith and Lance’s bowed heads and the array of books on the living room floor and considers the smile on Takashi’s lips. He doesn’t seem to notice Adam looking, at first. He’s like Keith, that way: Adam can watch and watch and watch and sometimes it takes either of them whole minutes to notice. It lets Adam study their profile, the slope of their nose, the scar on Takashi’s face and the grey in his hair; the wild fluff of Keith’s hair and the red on his neck when he scratches at it anxiously.

“Having fun?” Adam asks Takashi, nudging him just a little.

“Oh yeah,” Takashi replies. “I love a good headache.”

He says it like he means it but the smile doesn’t fade.

A little life is good for him. A little laughter. A little bit of shrieking from the three ridiculous boys on their floor.

Adam thinks about asking: What would you be like, if you were a dad?

But that isn’t for them, not right now. Takashi’s too busy trying to open up the world for Keith, for himself.

Adam’s a little busy, too.

 

* * *

 

“Do you want to meet my friend?” Hunk says, poking Keith in the arm.

“Huh?”

Hunk tugs a plush rat out of his pocket. “This is Keith!”

And Takashi has to press his face into the couch to keep his laughter quiet, stifled, and sane. Adam chokes, a little.

Keith frowns. “No, it’s a rat.”

“I named it after you.”

“‘cause it has your hair!” Lance shrieks and falls onto his back, howling. Adam is half-sure he’s about to explode from glee.

Keith frowns some more. And then, to Hunk: “Change its name, please.”

“What! No, it’s a compliment!”

“It is  _ not _ !”

“It’s a Keith I can keep in my pocket.”

Takashi sobs, a little. Lance is crying.

Adam straightens his glasses.

Keith sighs and plucks Rat Keith from Hunk’s hands and considers it soberly, and then sets it on the ground next in the blanket fort, next to Lance’s giant shark.

* * *

 

Pizza arrives just after Hunk declares the blanket fort “complete” and just after the boys pile the would-be fort full of blankets and pilfered pillows and their favourite stuffed animals. Keith tucks his hippo at the entrance to the fort, tilted just enough that Adam and Takashi can see the jut of its ears and the spots where the fabric of it is starting to fray. Lance’s shark is so big the boys shove it to the back and its tail pokes out under the back of the fort. Hunk’s rat is settled nearby, surveying them all.

Takashi drags himself off the couch to answer the door and Adam takes over ushering the boys into the kitchen. Keith and Lance bicker over a chair and then decide to share it. Hunk sighs a lot so Adam decides he should have extra parmesan cheese.

The kitchen smells, delightfully and for a while, of pizza and pepperoni, and it’s full of the sound of the boys talking back and forth, loud and quick, like they hadn’t just seen each other earlier that day.

Keith takes an enormous bite of his first slice and makes a loud, choked sound at the hot cheese. Takashi gives Adam his crusts.

For the most part, the two of them just watch. Adam shushes the boys when they get too loud and Takashi keeps them from drinking too much pop but—yes, mostly, they just watch. Adam wonders if this is the view of Keith his teachers get: bright-eyed and smiling wide and with his cheeks all flushed with happiness.

He’s very different, like this, and seems so far from the quiet little boy Takashi had fought to bring home, with his shaggy hair and his shuffling feet and twitchy hands. He’s very different, like this, and seems so far from the sometimes restless child who climbs into their bed just to talk when he can’t sleep, who won’t lie down unless Takashi wrestles him to the bed, who had said the week before (so innocently, so quickly): “You’re a good brother, Shiro.”

Adam misses something and clues back into the chaos when Keith shoves Lance off their chair and Lance crashes to the floor, cackling and wheezing through the eruption of his laughter.

“Boys!” Takashi barks but Lance keeps laughing and laughing and then Keith pounces and Lance’s laughter becomes shrieking and squeaking and high-pitched, panicked giggles.

“No!” Hunk cries. “Don’t tickle him! He’ll pee!”

“He won’t pee,” Keith decides for Lance and Lance tries and fails to bat Keith away.

And Adam prays, just for a moment and while his temples pulse.

 

* * *

 

Lance, thankfully, does not pee.

He realizes he has forgotten his toothbrush, however, so he runs home half-shrieking like he’ll miss something important while he’s gone, like Hunk and Keith won’t sit on the floor and wait for him to come back.

“We could put on a movie,” Takashi suggests, watching Hunk and Keith scurry into their blanket fort.

“Maybe when Lance is back,” Keith says over his shoulder.

Hunk drags a puzzle box out of his bag with a triumphant cry and he and Keith dump all the pieces on the floor.

“Do you guys want to go to the table?” Takashi tries.

“No thanks!” they reply together.

Adam hears Lance making his way back, all the way down the block. He’s a little siren, that one, yelling his way through life like he’s afraid someone will forget he’s around.

Youngest sibling syndrome, Adam decides.

* * *

 

Lance gets impatient partway through the puzzle and convinces Keith that now is the best time for scary stories.

Adam makes them pile the library books by the couch, where he can keep an eye on them. Hunk is relieved and keeps working on his corner of the puzzle until Keith comes back to join him, pouting just a little.

Lance sighs and throws himself in the back of the fort and switches puzzle pieces when Keith and Hunk aren’t looking. Keith’s tiny, frustrated noises whenever he notices make Lance snicker.

Takashi puts on a documentary. There are jellyfish.

“What?” he mutters when Adam looks at him. “It’s educational.”

The boys don’t seem to notice. Keith gives up on the puzzle and eats three more slices of pizza.

* * *

 

Around nine, the puzzle is half-finished and very much abandoned, and the boys are playing a vicious round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to pick the movie they watch.

Lance wants  _ Jurassic Park _ (“The old one!” he says, which makes Adam flinch).

Keith wants  _ The Nightmare Before Christmas _ .

Hunk is keen on  _ Zootopia _ but he loses quickly and sedately joins Adam on the couch.

Adam suffers four “ties” and one arm-wrestle before he seizes the remote and demands the boys crowd onto the couch.

They do.

Keith scowls up at Adam.

Takashi comes back, then, and pauses when he sees the four of them.

“What’d we pick?” Takashi asks slowly.

Adam tosses him the remote. “We didn’t. You are.”

“I am?”

“Yup.”

“I pick the documentary.”

“No!” Keith says. Maybe wails.

Takashi shakes his head and puts on a  _ Spider-Man _ (Adam isn’t sure which one) and Keith huffs through most of it.

And Adam—dozes off.

* * *

 

(“You’re not scary,” Keith tells Lance.

Lance waves the flashlight in his face.

Hunk pulls a blanket around his shoulders and frowns at both of them. “Let’s just finish the movie,” he mumbles.

“Shiro and Adam are finishing the movie.”

Adam snores, once, from the couch. “One story,” Shiro hisses at them. “And then back to the movie!”

“Okay, okay,” Keith mutters, waving a hand even though Shiro can’t see them.

“Shiro’s the best,” Lance decides. “I’m going to be Shiro when I grow up.”

“I’m gonna kick you out,” Keith sighs.

“Just hurry up!” Hunk says, maybe cries, and Keith and Lance and Shiro all shush him. Hunk hunches under the blanket. “One story! Shiro says!”

Lance rolls his eyes and Keith shuffles on his butt to face him and then Lance points the flashlight at his chin and flicks it on.

The effect isn’t much of anything.

Keith and Lance frown.

“Should I turn off the lights?” comes Shiro’s whisper.

Keith and Lance beam.

Hunk chews at the edge of the blanket.

“Marco told me this one,” Lance says, wiggling with excitement. “Do you guys know about the Flat Man?”

“No,” Keith says.

“I don’t like it,” Hunk mutters.

Keith pokes his leg.

“Well!” Lance huffs a deep breath and then grins so wide his teeth seem bright in the flashlight’s beam. “You know how sometimes, when you’re just snug in your bed and you’re just about to fall asleep, you hear stuff?”

“Stuff,” Keith echoes.

Shiro and Hunk shush him.

“Maybe you tell yourself it’s just the wind, or something falling over in your closet, or someone outside tripping on the sidewalk...doesn’t matter. Deep down you know it’s really  _ him _ , creeping around and waiting to find you…”

“You’re bad at this.”

“Shut up, Keith! Just listen!”)

 

* * *

 

Adam wakes up with a snort and to the sound of someone gasping.

He falls against Takashi, blinking with his glasses askew, and notes the jellyfish on the TV with a frown. Takashi’s had lolls back against the couch.

All the lights are off.

“That’s not scary,” comes Lance’s voice from the blanket fort. “Give me the flashlight.”

“No way,” says Keith. “It’s Hunk’s turn.”

“Hunk doesn’t know any good stories!”

“Give him a book!”

“Give me the flashlight!”

There’s a scuffle. The light in the fort wavers.

Adam frowns some more.

“Okay here’s a good one,” Lance says, sounding breathless and victorious. Keith grumbles incoherently. “This one’s about Fearless Mary.”

“Bloody Mary?”

“I definitely said Fearless.”

“This is stupid,” comes Hunk’s voice, quivering and soft.

“It’s okay, Hunk,” says Keith. “Lance isn’t scary.”

“Just listen!” The light wavers some more and then Lance continues: “Fearless Mary and her dad lived on a farm, and Mary took care of the house and stuff.”

“And stuff.”

Hunk and Lance hush Keith.

“One dark and windy night, Mary’s dad was hanging out with his friends the blacksmith and the grave digger.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Mary’s dad asked her to go grab a snack from the store—”

“The store?”

“Yeah, the store! And Mary was like ‘Yeah, sure.’ So off she goes, but the blacksmith’s a little worried and says Mary shouldn’t be walking outside by herself but Mary’s dad says ‘My daughter’s not afraid of anything in the world, dead or alive. Right, Mary?’ And Mary replies: ‘That’s right.’”

“I thought she left already.”

“Me too,” pipes up Hunk.

“You guys’re distracting me! Okay, Mary puts on her coat and heads out and comes back with snacks. The guys are all pleased and her dad’s extra proud so he says to his friends: ‘I bet you fifty bucks you can’t come up with a thing Mary won’t do.’”

Adam slips from the couch and stretches. The library books are scattered across the floor, and the jellyfish continue to swim pleasantly on the TV. Someone says something softly that Adam doesn’t understand, and Takashi sleeps on behind him.

The light in the fort wavers and dances as Lance continues, Hunk and Keith complaining occasionally.

Adam eyes the tail of Lance’s shark, poking out the back of the fort, and places his hands on his hips.

“Mary, fearless and victorious, comes running home with the skull and tosses it to her dad and says: ‘There it is! Nothing scares me. Not even the ghosts in the basement.’ And her dad says: ‘Ghosts in the basement?’”

“She made it out just fine!” Keith complains. “This isn’t scary, Lance.”

“I’m not done!”

“I bet the ghosts are mad,” mumbles Hunk. “I bet they’re coming to get her.”

“ _ Anyways _ !”

Adam squats at the back of the fort, arms resting on his knees and a sigh held in his chest.

“‘But Mary,’ Mary’s dad says. ‘Those weren’t ghosts. That was the grave digger! He was trying to scare you so he could win the bet.’”

“Oh my god,” groans Keith. “Lance you  _ suck _ .”

Lance barrels on, which Adam thinks is admirable: “‘Oh no,’ says Mary. ‘I locked him in the basement!’”

“With all the bones?” Hunk whispers. “With the ghosts?”

“The ghosts aren’t real,” Keith grumbles.

“Yeah, Hunk,” Lance says seriously, quietly. “With the ghosts. And the bones. The poor grave digger, all alone in the basement with nothing but the dead to keep him company...so they go back to the house, and Mary and her dad and the blacksmith rush to the basement door and unlock and they find it dark, and quiet, and stinky…”

“Stinky,” Keith says.

“He’s dead,” moans Hunk. “He’s really dead.”

“They creep down the stairs,” Lance continues, dragging out each word. Adam can see his shadow wiggling his fingers at Keith and Hunk, the flashlight finally held steady.

Adam tilts onto his knees and slips his fingers under the blanket, on either side of the shark’s tale, and shakes his head.

“And at the bottom,” Lance says, his voice growing softer. “They find—”

Adam lifts the blanket with a protesting  _ thwump _ of the fabric and says, as nonchalantly as he can: “Boys, what did I tell you?”

And they shriek, all three of them, and Hunk falls over and Lance tries to eat the flashlight and Keith—

Keith throws a glass of pop in Adam’s face, swearing just like Adam accidentally taught him to.

* * *

 

The thick IKEA glass gives Adam a big, dark bruise on his forehead and the pop seeps into his collar and sticks behind his ears.

Takashi wakes up with a start and a shout that make Adam and Keith panic, briefly, and then Takashi laughs and laughs and laughs until he chokes and coughs and falls off the couch.

“You deserve that,” he tells Adam when Hunk explains what happened.

“Did I,” Adam deadpans.

“I told you I was scary,” Lance tells Keith while they fix their fort.

“Adam scared us! Not you!”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all,
> 
> This was my piece for the Cosmic Dust Charity Zine, which you can find more info about [here](https://cosmicdustzine.tumblr.com)! If you enjoyed this, check out the rest of the zine and consider donating to the True Colors United Fund! I had the immense privilege of collaborating with Sarah, who inspired me so much with [this AMAZING ART](https://caelestee.tumblr.com/post/184649651155/my-full-piece-for-cosmicdustzine-i-collabed) she did of the boys in their fort. 
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://zenstrike.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/zenstrikeff) if you'd like to yell or cry with me bahahaha.


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